NHL / STANLEY CUP FINALS : Green Sees North Stars Turn Into Gold

A year ago, nobody wanted the Minnesota North Stars--not the owners, not the city, not the fans.

They had no stars, no coach and no apparent future.

Twelve months later, they stand, skates poised, only two games away from the Stanley Cup, tied with the Pittsburgh Penguins, 2-2, heading into Game 5 of the best-of-seven final series tonight at the Civic Arena. The North Stars have become the toast of the hockey world and the new darlings of Minnesota.

Nostradamus on his best day couldn’t have seen this one coming.

Nor, in all honesty, did Norm Green.

Green, who made his fortune in real estate and shopping malls, is a minority owner of the Calgary Flames. That gave him nice seats but little say in the operation of the team. He wanted more bang for his bucks.

He got his chance after North Star owners George and Gordon Gund threatened to move their club to San Jose last spring rather than stick with a deteriorating situation in Minnesota, where they were losing their fans as rapidly as their games.

But talk of bolting for the West Coast didn’t particularly thrill NHL officials who had plans for an expansion team in the San Francisco Bay Area, along with a $50-million entry fee.

A deal was struck to give the Gunds the expansion team. In exchange, they sold the North Stars for about $38 million in a complicated transaction with businessmen Morris Belzberg and Howard Baldwin.

But when Belzberg needed additional funds for the deal, he called his closest friend, Green.

Before their nameplates were securely on the door, however, Belzberg and Baldwin were out the door and Green was in total command.

For another $10 million.

No hard feelings, however, from Belzberg, who makes his money in the rental car business.

Green simply told him, “I have a confession to make. All my life, I’ve wanted to own my own hockey team.”

So Belzberg, ever the good friend, stepped aside.

The parting of the ways was not so amicable in the cases of many of the full-time and part-time North Star employees who have since been fired. Swinging his ax freely, Green removed most of the workers he inherited, claiming overstaffing and a difference in “style” with the previous administration.

Asked earlier this week about the rampage through the front office, Green smiled and said: “I’m still firing them.”

Green’s image took a beating. He was called Norman Greed and the Smiling Assassin.

Why get into such a situation with a team that hadn’t posted a winning record in four seasons and had only 3,300 season ticket-holders in Met Center, the North Stars’ 15,000-plus arena?

“Easy,” Green said. “It was a good hockey market. The attendance was going backward while every other team’s was going forward. Here’s an area with 3 million people and an interest in hockey losing millions while other teams are making money. It was not logical.”

So Green decided to use his own logic in salesmanship to bring back the fans while hoping that a new front-office team--General Manager Bobby Clarke and Coach Bob Gainey--could bring back respectability.

There was another factor in Green’s decision: the Mall of America. This imposing structure, which will be the largest shopping mall in the country, will rise during the next 18 months on land adjoining Met Center. That will mean masses of people constantly streaming in and out.

“With the mall,” Green said, “with a good economy and growth and with the road patterns (linking the new mall and Met Center), it didn’t take a brain surgeon to see what can happen.”

It didn’t take a cardiologist to predict that a strong heart and low blood pressure were absolute necessities in the North Star front office as the new season began.

Minnesota went 5-15-5 in its first 25 games.

And the fans continued to stay away. Only 5,730 showed up for the opener. It didn’t get much better. The North Stars averaged fewer than 6,000 a game in the early going. They didn’t get more than 10,000 to a game until the end of the calender year and only did so seven times in 40 regular-season dates.

Even Green’s big giveaway didn’t make a dent in the empty seats. Each night, the team awarded a cash prize of about $15,000 to the holder of a lucky seat number. If the seat went unsold, the money carried over. It reached nearly $50,000 one night.

There were so many empty seats, players started buying tickets, hoping to win. The New York Rangers purchased a dozen for one game.

For Green, rock bottom came on Jan. 15. Playing host to the Montreal Canadiens, the North Stars drew 5,375.

“That was always the team for me,” Green said of the Canadiens. “That night, I went into a serious state of depression.”

For the first time, the thought of pulling out seemed plausible.

But not yet.

For one thing, Green figured it was going to take three years to turn things around. For another, the image of the mall remained a source of hope.

But the biggest source of hope turned out to be on the ice.

Clarke went out and got veterans Bobby Smith and Brian Propp to blend with talented younger players Brian Bellows, Dave Gagner and Mark Tinordi.

And then Gainey went to work, building a team around a young, aggressive defense, a balanced offense, solid, effective special teams and the secure goaltending of Jon Casey.

It took a while. The North Stars finished the regular season 27-39-14, giving them the fewest victories among the 16 playoff teams.

Over the last six weeks, however, Minnesota has bumped off the top regular-season team, the Chicago Blackhawks, in six games; the No. 2 team, the St. Louis Blues, in another six, and the defending Stanley Cup champion Edmonton Oilers in a shocking five games to reach the finals.

Giving the town a winning team filled a lot more seats than giving away all that money. During the regular season, the North Stars averaged fewer than 8,000, a league low. Victorious in eight of its 10 home playoff games, Minnesota has sold out seven of them, averaging 14,871 fans.

Green is pulling in even more fans and money by televising the games on a pay-per-view basis.

The Gunds lost an estimated $16 million in the previous four seasons. Green figured he could lose as much as $6 million this season.

Now, it looks as if he’ll come close to breaking even.

“I knew it would happen,” he said. “I just didn’t know it would be this year.”

That was beyond even the logical realm of Norm Green.

NHL Notes

There were no further back spasms for Pittsburgh Penguin center Mario Lemieux after his return to action in Minnesota Tuesday night in Game 4 after missing one game. “Mario said he felt pretty good (Wednesday) morning,” said his coach, Bob Johnson, “and we’re happy with that. After the flight back and getting home late, it’s encouraging news for us. He’s undergoing normal stretching treatment, which he has been very faithful with. He’ll probably have to do that for the rest of his life.” . . . The NHL announced that the expansion draft for the San Jose Sharks has been moved from June 17 to May 30 so that the June 1 deadline for contract offers can be honored.